Local
GLAA grades Council hopefuls
Candidates get mid-range to low grades; special D.C. election set for April 26
GLAA (Blade file photo)
D.C. City Council candidates Sekou Biddle and Bryan Weaver, both Democrats, each received a rating of +5.5 this week from the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, the highest score given by the group for the nine Council candidates running in the city’s April 26 special election.
GLAA, a non-partisan political group, rates candidates on LGBT and some non-LGBT issues on a scale of -10 to +10. The group says it bases its ratings on responses given by candidates to a GLAA questionnaire and on their past record on LGBT and AIDS issues.
“No candidates in the April 26 special election for At-Large D.C. Council member approached the ‘perfect tens’ from the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance that were earned in recent elections by Council members Jack Evans, David Catania, Jim Graham, and Phil Mendelson,” the group said in a statement. Catania and Graham are openly gay.
Republican candidate Patrick Mara and Statehood-Green Party candidate Alan Page each received a +4 rating. Democrat Vincent Orange, a former Ward 5 Council member, received a 3.5 rating; and Democrat Joshua Lopez, an aide to former Mayor Adrian Fenty, received a +2.5.
Democratic candidates Tom Brown and Dorothy Douglas and independent candidate Arkan Haile each received a rating of “0.” GLAA said the three failed to return the questionnaire and the group automatically assigns a 0 rating to such candidates unless it can verify a past record on LGBT related issues.
Each of the candidates that returned the questionnaire expressed support for LGBT rights, including support for the city’s same-sex marriage law.
In a statement accompanying the release of its ratings, GLAA acknowledged that the candidates indicated in their questionnaire responses that they support GLAA’s positions on nearly each of the 14 issues the group raised in its questions. It said most of the candidates lost points by not providing sufficient substance to their responses, which, according to the group, would demonstrate a better grasp and understanding of the issues.
“We just don’t want yes or no answers,” said GLAA Vice President Rick Rosendall. “We want the substance behind the answers.”
Rosendall said the substantive issues surrounding each of the questions asked of the candidates are included in a 24-page GLAA “agenda” briefing paper for the D.C. LGBT community published on the group’s website. He said the group sent each candidate a copy of the paper along with the questionnaire.
The subjects covered in the questionnaire, among other things, include marriage and family, public health, public safety, human rights, youth, and protection for LGBT consumers and businesses – all in connection to how they pertain to the LGBT community, according GLAA.
One question asks what steps the candidates would take to improve the performance of the city’s AIDS office. Another asks, “Do you support the right of adults in the District to choose adult-oriented entertainment for themselves, and the right of appropriately licensed and zoned businesses to provide it?”
All of the candidates answering the questionnaire responded with a “yes” answer to the latter question, although they gave differing explanations of their views on the subject of adult businesses.
Each of the candidates except one — Statehood-Green Party candidate Page — gave a “no” answer to a question asking if they would consider supporting decriminalizing, zoning, taxing, and regulating prostitution in the District. GLAA noted in its questionnaire that marginalized groups such as low-income LGBT and transgender youth sometimes turn to prostitution as a means of economic survival and often are subjected to further difficulties if arrested for engaging in the sex trade.
Page and the other candidates said their favored solution to the problems of LGBT and trans youth is city sponsored job training , substance abuse counseling, and enforcement of non-discrimination laws that would eliminate the need for marginalized groups to turn to prostitution for survival.
GLAA said Biddle’s questionnaire was “generally positive but offered limited substance and was often vague.” The Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the city’s largest LGBT political group, endorsed Biddle.
Mara, who is currently a member of the city’s board of education from Ward 1, has expressed strong support for LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage. GLAA said he lost points on his rating, among other things, because he lobbied Congress for a federal school voucher program. The program pays D.C. students’ tuition in private, religious elementary and secondary schools that are exempt from the city’s human rights law, which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
In his questionnaire response, Mara said he backs the program because it allows students from low-income familiar to attend schools considered better academically than city public schools.
Mara this week received the endorsement of the GLBT group Log Cabin Republicans of Washington.
Copies of the candidates’ responses to the GLAA questionnaire and a breakdown of their ratings by points can be viewed at www.glaa.org.
Delaware
Delaware fines Rehoboth bar $15,000 for discriminating against trans woman
Hideout told patron she had to use men’s room due to gender marker on driver’s license
The Delaware Human and Civil Rights Commission voted to fine Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille $15,000 last month due to a discrimination complaint filed by a trans woman over her use of the bathroom.
Katie Sorber, a transgender woman, said that on April 5, 2023, she was stopped by employees and told she could only use the men’s bathroom due to the “male” gender marker on her driver’s license. This occurred after Sorber presented her ID upon entering the bar and ordering a drink.
Sorber took to Facebook to complain about her experience at the bar after she was told to use the men’s bathroom.
On April 12, 2023, Sorber returned to the Hideout but was barred from entering due to her post on social media.
Following Sorber’s post, Bryan Derrickson, the owner of Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille, allegedly began enforcing a policy in which patrons had to use the bathroom that corresponded to the gender marker on their ID.
Derrickson was ordered to pay $10,000 to Sorber, $5,000 to the Special Administration Fund, as well as conduct anti-discrimination training with employees, remove the ban on Sorber from the establishment, and revise the bar’s bathroom policy.
The commission ruled that the bar and Derrickson had wrongfully discriminated against Sorber on the basis of her gender.
Derrickson’s explanations for the denial included safety concerns, a third-party patron complaint, and a reference to the health code. The panel found this to be inconsistent and lacking factual support upon cross-examination.
The case was evaluated under the Delaware Equal Accommodations Law, which explicitly prohibits discrimination and retaliation in places of public accommodation based on gender identity.
This was the second time that the bar has been fined for discriminating against a transgender woman. The bar received a $2,000 penalty in September of last year for denying a transgender woman entry in 2023.
Half of the fine went to Kathy Carpenter Brown, the trans woman who experienced the discrimination. Brown is the founder of TransLiance, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group in Delaware.
District of Columbia
Push to elect more LGBTQ ANC members yields results
31 of 43 known LGBTQ ANC members elected in 2024 seeking re-election
A 2026 list of candidates released by the D.C. Board of Elections shows that 31 of the 43 known LGBTQ candidates who won election in 2024 as Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners have filed the required petition signatures to be placed on the ballot this year to run for re-election.
The Washington Blade reported in 2024 that 43 known LGBTQ candidates won election to ANC seats that year in the November election
In a related development, the president of Capital Stonewall Democrats, D.C.’s largest local LGBTQ political group, said the group this year has recruited at least 39 LGBTQ candidates to run for Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats in the city’s Nov. 3 general election.
The group’s president, Stevie McCarty, an incumbent ANC member in the city’s Shaw neighborhood who is running for re-election, said the 39 candidates and possibly more responded to the group’s Queering ANCs campaign launched on July 7 that includes a website with detailed instructions for how best to run for an ANC seat.
“Since launching in early July, the site has drawn more than 20,000 views, and 39 candidates have used it to actually run,” McCarty said in a statement. He said he wasn’t sure if all the 39 candidates wanted to be identified as LGBTQ, and he was reviewing the list of incumbent LGBTQ ANC members who won election in 2024 to determine if any of the 39 candidates recruited were among those incumbents. He said he was not ready to release the names of the 39 candidates he said his group recruited to run for an ANC seat.
If none of the 39 candidates recruited by Capital Stonewall Democrats are among the 31 known LGBTQ ANC incumbents running for re-election, it would mean at least 70 LGBTQ ANC candidates will be on the city’s November election ballot.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will send candidate questionnaires to the known LGBTQ ANC candidates as part of its process for endorsing candidates in the November election. He said he expects the group to help campaign for and provide financial support for the ANC candidates it endorses.
The D.C. local government is believed to be unique among U.S. cities in currently having 46 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions consisting of 345 single member districts in neighborhoods throughout the city in which unpaid Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are elected for two-year terms.
The commissions are charged with considering a wide range of policies and programs impacting their neighborhoods, including traffic, parking, recreation, street improvements, zoning, liquor licenses, and economic development. Although ANCs do not have authority to set or reject policies or actions by city agencies, the agencies are required to give “great weight” to ANC recommendations, according to the law creating the ANCs.
“As an ANC member, I know firsthand how these seats shape our neighborhoods, from housing and public safety to sanitation,” McCarty said in the Capital Stonewall Democrats statement announcing the launch of the Queering ANCs campaign in July. “I’m proud to lead this effort to ensure more LGBTQ+ Washingtonians see themselves as leaders in their communities,” he said.
Some local LGBTQ activists, who asked not to be identified, said they were not aware of a significant boost in new LGBTQ ANC candidates from the Queering ANCs campaign. However, they praised the effort to recruit more LGBTQ ANC candidates and said the campaign could have yielded more candidates if it had started sooner than less than a month before the deadline for becoming a candidate.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will continue to recruit LGBTQ D.C. residents to run as write-in candidates for ANC seats, especially in the 45 single member districts in which no candidate will be on the ballot. The Board of Elections candidate list shows many ANC single member districts that have just one candidate running without an opponent.
Following is a list of 33 known LGBTQ ANC candidates running in D.C.’s November 2026 election and the single member districts and neighborhoods in which they are running. All but two – Vita Rangel and J. Swiderski – are incumbents running for re-election. The Washington Blade will update this list if and when more LGBTQ ANC candidates become known.
1A04 – (Columbia Heights) Jeremy Sherman, he/him
1A10 – (Columbia Heights) Vita Rangel, she/ her [non-incumbent candidate]
1B03 – (Columbia Heights/U Street) J. Swiderski, they/he [non-incumbent candidate]
Jamie S. Sycamore, he/him
1B06 – (Columbia Heights/Meridian Hill) Miguel Trindade Deramo, he/him
1B07 – (U Street) Matthew Holden, he/him
1E01 – (Park View) Brad Howard, he/him
2B02 – (Dupont Circle) Jeffrey Rueckgauer, he/him
2B03 – (Dupont Circle) Vincent Slatt, he/him
2C01 – (Penn Quarter) Michael D. Shankle, he/him
2F05 – (Logan Circle) Christopher Dyer, he/him
2F07 – (Logan Circle) Kevin Cataldo, he/him
2G01 – (Shaw)Parker Griffin, he/him Howard Garrett, he/him
2G02 – (Shaw) Alexander ‘Alex’ Padro, he/him
2G04 – (Shaw) Steven McCarty, he/him
3B06 – (Wesley Heights) S. Robert Rodriquez, he/him
3F05 – (Van Ness/Cleveland Park) Adrian Jesus Iglesias, he/him
4B01 – (Takoma) Doug Payton, he/him
4B10 – (Lamond Riggs) Jinin Berry, she/her
4C06 – (Petworth) Christen Boss Hayes, they/them
4E02 – (16th Street Heights) Vince Micone, he/him
5B04 – (Brookland) Ra Amin, he/him
5B05 – (Brookland) Mónica Martínez López, she/her
5D05 – (Trinidad) Salvador Sauceda-Guzman, he/him
5F06 – (Eckington) Joe Bishop-Henchman, he/him
6B03 – (Capitol Hill) David Sobelsohn, he/him
6B09 – (Capitol Hill/Barney Circle) Karen Hughes, she/her
7C01 – (Deanwood) Brian Glover, he/him
7C03 – (Lincoln Heights) Carlos Richardson, he/him
7C04 (Deanwood) Anthony Lorenzo Green
7C08 – (Capitol View) Brandon M. Scott, he/him
8A01 – (Fairlawn) Tom Donohue, he, him
8B06 – (Garfield Heights) Marcus Thomas Hickman, he/him
Congress
Chris Van Hollen says the Democratic Party needs change. Is he the one to lead it?
Senator is backing anti-establishment Democrats across the country
By LEE O. SANDERLIN | The Democratic Party is having something of an identity crisis — losing to President Donald Trump twice in three elections will do that.
Should the party embrace anti-establishment figures who espouse progressive policy ideas like Medicare for all and rhetoric about unrigging the economy for the 1 percent? Or should Democrats try to appeal to moderates who want to return to semi-normalcy in a time of political upheaval?
Although he’s been in Congress since 2002, with key leadership roles throughout his tenure, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, 67, counts himself firmly in the anti-establishment camp.
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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